Editorial
Reuters Thomson polls
Assuring safer place for women
Of the places most dangerous to women are Afghanistan, Congo, Pakistan, India and Somalia, as found by a Thomson Reuters Foundation expert polls result published recently. Although Bangladesh is not in the list, which is gratifying, yet there is hardly any reason for complacency. The screaming headlines on all forms of conceivable violence against women in media are tell-tale.
Now what does the Thomson Reuters polls report has to say about some of the societies under review? A tradition-bound society Afghanistan, ravaged by wars for the last three decades is hardly any safe place for a woman. Small wonder 87 per cent of its women has remained illiterate and 70 to 80 per cent of them married off forcibly. On the other hand Democratic Republic of Congo, a resource-rich African nation is still reeling from the ugly civil war between 1998-2003 that killed millions. Amidst racial hatred among tribes that fuelled that war, rape is a weapon of war. Which is why, on an average 40 women are raped there everyday, while Pakistan, itself steeped in extremism and bigotry, and also fighting the Afghan war by proxy has become the home to rabid militancy. So women are victims of acid attacks, 90 per cent of them face domestic violence, girl children are married off forcibly and according to the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, annually 1,000 women are made victims of honour killing.
With close socio-cultural link to Pakistan and Bangladesh, India with its 1.21 billion population is also no safe home for women. Seen as a burden to family, foeticide, child marriage, servitude and trafficking in women are rampant.
But free from those kinds of wars and social curses, with its rather homogeneous society, Bangladesh should have been a far safer place for women. But the reality is its women are being made victims of domestic violence, acid attacks, eave-teasing leading often to suicide.
We have a huge stake in improving the condition of our women so that Bangladesh may graduate to a higher place among the advanced democracies so far as the overall status of women is concerned.
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